Before I begin, I’d like to thank all those who helped me fix a problem with some of my posts not displaying. Special thanks to Travis and also to Michael over at WP Candy. And all on Twitter. If you haven’t used Twitter, then I recommend it.

Let’s get started with Brand Tags, a simple, great idea from Noah Brier. Look at the brand and enter the first word that comes into your head. The collective results are displayed as a tag cloud: Continue reading this article

Welcome to iLT’s second-quarter roundup of sites that use type well. It may be that not all the sites listed here are to your taste, but it’s hoped that something—even a detail somewhere—will inspire you. Invariably, these lists are subjective, so if you disagree, then feel free to do so in the comments below. If this list provokes discussion of what constitutes good web typography, then all the better. The designs are listed in no particular order. Click on the screen-shot to visit the site. Enjoy!

Designing the News

High contrast between header and main content area, lots of white space and well organised.

Welcome to May’s first Sunday Type. Yes, it’s May already! First is this great poster found via the equally great Designer Daily. The lower version is the poster as viewed in a mirror (or flipped horizontally in PhotoShop). A nice idea:

Nadine Chahine is an incredibly talented Lebanese type designer with a very special interest in Arabic typography. She taught Arabic type design as a visiting lecturer at the American University in Dubai and then joined Linotype, Germany, where she is now in charge of Sales Marketing and Arabic-related projects. As of September 2007 she is also a PhD candidate and her topic is legibility studies for the Arabic script.

It feels as though someone stole Wednesday and Thursday. Anyway, not much that can be done about that. Let’s get things rolling on a lighter note. Typophile, holds a great themed competition—or battle—each week. This week’s is one that anyone can have a go at:

Garamond and Zebrawood walk into a bar, they have a few drinks and one thing leads to another…. Create from scratch, the typographic love child of: Garamond and Zebrawood.

Just click on over to Typophile to get involved. And still on a lighter note, this rather unfortunate logo for the UK’s Office of Government Commerce. Be sure to rotate your logo designs before submitting to the client!

“The very air of the room seemed charmingly alive with little floating dollar signs and fat little ciphers, commas, more ciphers, all winging around happily, waiting for a mere scratch of the pen to call them into action.”
—Dawn Powell, Angels on Toast, 1938.

The Roman alphabet came equipped with its own numbering system, and Roman numerals still have their uses. They are commonly seen, for instance, on clock faces, in movie credits, and on the pages of a book which precede the introduction and the text itself. The letters M D C L X V and I, used in combination and sometimes with a bar over the letter, Roman numerals can signify all whole or natural numbers. Well, everything but zero (0). The zero was invented in India, and it has maintained the same form, generally a circle but sometimes just a dot, ever since.

Welcome to iLT’s 100th post. Thanks to everyone who sent in questions and who read and commented on my interview with Jos Buivenga. Also, thanks to Jos for being such a good sport, and taking the time out of his busy schedule to answer our questions. I’ll be sure to keep you updated on the man from exljbris.

When it comes to type, some great things have come out of Arnhem in the Netherlands. Jos Buivenga is no exception. Art Director and type designer, well-known for his quality free fonts, Jos is quite a talent, and has quite a passion for type. After numerous requests from readers, I finally got around to interviewing the man behind exljbris.

Why do you design typefaces?

It has grown on me. It’s now more or less like breathing to me. I can’t help it. I just want to do it. It allows me to be highly involved—or even lose myself—in a creative process. That’s the most important thing in my life. I’ve had similar experiences with painting and writing short stories, but it doesn’t come close to designing type. I’ve taught myself and still have lots to learn but I hope to improve with every typeface I make.

Before we get started, I’d just like to announce that on Wednesday I’ll be publishing the long-awaited interview with Jos Buivenga, the man behind type foundry exljbris. Thanks to everyone for their questions for Jos submissions. Is it really Sunday again? Well, it had better be, because today we have a jam-packed-to-bursting roundup of type news, free fonts and lots more.Continue reading this article

An invisible grid of parallel horizontal lines is used as a constant reference in the creation of a font. It resembles a musical score and its four (or five) horizontal lines represent, from top to bottom, the ascender line (the height of the highest ascender), which is sometimes equivalent to and sometimes higher than the ascent or capline (the height of the capital letters). Next comes the meanline or waist line (the height of a lowercase x), which can be referred to as a high waist line or a low waist line; the baseline (on which the letters appear to rest); and finally, at the very bottom, the descent, descender or beard line (the level to which the lowest descenders descend).

First, a big thank you to all who read and commented on On Choosing Type. I’m in search of contributing authors who can write case studies on type choice for, say, a redesign. For example, Creative Review magazine recently redesigned and chose to use Farnham throughout; an article on why a certain type was chosen and how it compliments other elements—that’s the kind of thing I’m after. If you’re interested, then simply send me mail.

Let’s begin our Sunday Type with Smoothing Out the Creases with Web Fonts, from Jon Tan. I mentioned the importance of checking your type across different systems, and Jon’s article considers the rendering of fonts in OSX and Windows. Great article.

Free Fonts

A great little—with emphasis on the little—font from those talented people at Underware. A number of people have emailed to ask which typeface I use to set the the captions for illustrations. In fact, I stole the idea from Kris Sowersby after he used it for his article Newzald: From Moleskine to Market. It’s only designed to be used at one size, 8pt; but I guess there’s nothing stopping you using it at larger sizes too—might be fun.

Typography is not a science. Typography is an art. There are those who’d like to ‘scientificize’; those who believe that a large enough sample of data will somehow elicit good typography. However, this sausage-machine mentality will only ever produce sausages. That typography and choosing type is not a science trammeled by axioms and rules is a cause to rejoice.

Before we get to the nitty-gritty of choosing type, let’s briefly talk about responsibility. Fundamentally, the responsibility we bear is two-fold: first we owe it to the reader not to hinder their reading pleasure, but to aid it; second, we owe a responsibility to the typeface or typefaces we employ. Good typefaces are designed for a good purpose, but not even the very best types are suited to every situation. Personally, I’m always a little nervous about using a newly acquired typeface. A new typeface is something like a newborn baby (though it doesn’t throw-up on you): don’t drop it, squeeze it too hard, hold it upside-down; in other words, don’t abuse it, treat it respectfully, carefully.

If you’ve understood the above two paragraphs, then you’ll know that what follows is not a set of rules, but rather a list of guiding principles.